The three-stage framework for developing and improving your skills provides the basis for you to become more confident in:

developing a strategy for using a variety of techniques and tools for working with others, including being clear about what you want to achieve, identifying relevant sources of information that will help you to achieve your goals, and planning how you intend to improve your skills;

monitoring your progress and cri

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Very few people study or work in complete isolation. Some courses now set projects and assignments that need to be completed in pairs or groups, either face-to-face or using e-conferencing. Even if your course does not formally require you to do this, working with others is an important part of your skills portfolio. Most jobs require you to work as part of a team, and employers value individuals who can demonstrate this.

In working on a work project or an assignment with others – in

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This key skill has used a three-stage framework for developing your skills. By developing a strategy, monitoring your progress and evaluating your overall approach, you take an active role in your own learning. But learning does not necessarily follow a path of steady improvement, it involves change: revisiting ideas, seeing things from different perspectives, tackling things in different ways.

You are unlikely to be able to complete your work by working through it from beginning to end

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How will you best present your problem-solving process to others? You may need to produce a written account or report as well as an oral presentation. What material will you need to support your work? You may need to provide posters, organise a demonstration, a working model or a prototype product, or be able to offer other examples of your work. Find out what is expected of you and the format in which you should present your findings.

What evidence do you have to support your conclusio

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This stage of the framework focuses on identifying what you have achieved and how well you have achieved it. It involves you in evaluating your strategy and presenting the outcomes of your work. As you evaluate and assess your strategy, identify aspects of your problem-solving skills that you want to develop further. At the end of this stage, use the records in your Skills File to complete the activity ‘Evaluating your problem-solving strategy and presenting outcomes’ and pull togeth

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Often plans run into difficulties because of unforeseen problems or changing circumstances. For example, you may be running over your deadlines, the resources or support you were expecting are unavailable to you, or your personal circumstances may have changed. Plans are only a means to an end, however. If you run into difficulties, take some time to think about what effect they will have on your plans, and what changes you may need to make to your overall strategy to achieve the outcomes you

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Effective management means putting your resources to work and monitoring your progress. For each stage of the work you will need to gather together the resources necessary in good time, and maintain the co-operation of other people working with you. Think about how you will keep the project moving forward for all those involved. Are the goals still clear, or have you become enmeshed in detail?

Use milestones or review points to keep your plan up to date and, if necessary, modify your pl

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In many contexts problem-solving activities will involve other people. You may need to seek permissions, advice, support and resources from a range of people, such as your tutor, manager, group or team colleagues, or others who may have authority over or be affected by your work.

Some aspects of negotiation are:

gaining the co-operation of colleagues, as necessary;

establishing the availability of resources, including staffing;<

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Explore and compare the options available to you. Be critically aware of the different factors such as technical, commercial, political, academic or personal interests that may influence your choice of options.

How will you arrive at those solutions most likely to meet the agreed conditions for success? In comparing possible approaches you might use:

decision-making techniques: developing and applying a decision tree to help you select a

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This stage is about keeping track of your progress. Are you tackling your problem-solving activities effectively? How do you know? Could you have done things differently, made use of different tools (such as software packages) or facilities, taken more advantage of tutorials, training sessions or local expertise, or recognised that such support would have helped you?

Monitoring your own performance and progress needs practice; try to stand back and look at what you are doing as if you w

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Exploring and planning an activity often results in different options, possibilities and ways forward. Some approaches will be more feasible or will interest you more than others. At this stage you need to think about how you will be using your problem-solving skills and how you will assess the overall quality of your work. To help you make these decisions, you may find tools such as concept maps or critical-path analysis helpful in representing the different parts of the problem-solving acti

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Spend some time finding out about what you will need to help you complete your problem-solving work successfully and who you need to consult. You may need to arrange access to a library, the Internet, databases on CD-ROM or online, or specialist training or publications. If you need to learn more about tools or techniques (for example concept maps, critical-path diagrams or flowcharts), then look first at your course material, and then at study guides or notes aimed at your area of interest (

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Recognising and framing problems so that you can tackle them effectively is a central part of a problem-solving strategy. Often, problems are not presented in a well-defined way, and it is up to you to define exactly why a problem exists and what its boundaries are.

Recognising a problem means identifying that there is a gap between the present situation and what is desirable, and establishing that no immediate solution is at hand. This exploratory stage is about finding out more about

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An outcome is the result or consequence of a process. For example, you may want contribute effectively to a design project in a course, or work in a team to improve a product or system. In this case the design or product improvement is an outcome, and using your problem-solving skills is part of the process by which you achieve that outcome. You may find it useful to discuss or negotiate the outcomes you hope to achieve with others. Solving problems will often depend to some extent on other k

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Where and how will you use problem-solving skills over the next 3–4 months? What opportunities do you have to develop your skills? For example, you may be working on a course project with a defined goal but the best route to that goal is not clear; you might be involved in contributing to the design of a system, improving its performance or investigating the feasibility of ideas; you may be involved in resolving resource or staffing difficulties, or in planning a major event.

Problems

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The three-stage framework for developing and improving your skills provides the basis for you to become more confident in:

developing a strategy for using a variety of problem-solving techniques and tools, including being clear about what you want to achieve, identifying relevant sources of information that will help you to achieve your goals, and planning how you intend to improve your skills;

monitoring your progress and critically

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